In the UK this is a far more common problem than the USA. For 20-10m, the G3TPW Cobwebb or the G3TXQ variant is very popular. 5 fullsize dipoles in an 8ft x 8ft antenna which will slaughter your verticals if you can get it 30ft high. Virtually everyone can manage to fit one of those somewhere. Downside is you're probably going to have to build your own as I think Steve Webb no longer exports.

The antennas with the bad review won't really be that better if you used zero loss coax. I have a run of 80ft of RG213 to my Cobwebb and according to my antenna analyser the coax loss is 1.1dB at 28MHz. Unless you're using a run of RG58 or ridiculously long runs of RG213 you won't really benefit from using something such as LMR400 at HF frequencies.

To give you the best advice we need as much information as possible such as the size of the area you're able to use for antennas, whether or not you would be able to, want or afford a tower, what bands you would like to work. For single element antennas it is hard to beat a resonant dipole for each band you want to work.

In my area there used to be three voice repeaters, two on VHF covering a massive area, one on UHF. One of the VHF ones was in a prime location on top of a hill on a commercial tower and could be opened 60+ miles away.

Well that repeater keeper managed to get a lottery grant. It got converted to DSTAR with him and his 5 buddies getting new Icom 2820s with this grant. His argument was that it never got used on analogue which was an outright lie. It now has 3 unique users a fortnight. It is also currently about to be moved to a small town in the middle of nowhere at sea level because he decided that he didn't want to pay the £100 a year site fee (inclusive of power and internet) and the new location will work at his house so he doesn't care.

The UHF repeater was turned into DSTAR by the neighbouring repeater group, again with another lottery grant, which was quite good as it was seldom used and now is.

The remaining VHF analogue repeater run by this same group was taken offline "for maintenance". That was 2 months ago. They are obsessed with DSTAR so I doubt there'll be a rush to get on the air.

This has resulted in a 2000 square mile area of the country with no analogue voice repeaters accessible by a HT or mobile station but fine if you're using DSTAR. In this country though, most of those using DSTAR have got them through lottery grants by being in a small clique, usually the committee of the repeater group running the repeaters.

Personally I wish it would get banned as it is a proprietary licensed encrypted communications protocol which is illegal to use on amateur radio and France has banned it because of this. If a repeater keeper doesn't like you he can ban you from the repeater.

Worse still is it does not offer anything new. Echolink, APRS and packet all cover everything that DSTAR does without having to spend the "Icom Tax" to use it.

I had a 20ft 1.5" diameter ally pole bend just above the top bracket with just a Cobweb on. Same Cobweb is now on a 20ft 2" pole and just fine.

I have another 15ft pole with a 10m Moxon and Yaesu rotator on it and when it gets really windy it sways quite badly.

Don't think Kenwood have anything to worry about with the TS590 yet.

Someone stole the antenna off my car this weekend - a Little Tarheel II mounted to the tailgate via a Diamond K400.

I've managed to get it back. Although the Diamond is bent a little on the bottom flat bit the antenna is still attached. The damage to the tailgate where they've ripped it off is quite significant and the antenna doesn't quite look straight showing the mount gave quite a fight before it came off.

Based on how well the K400 has come out of it I would have no hesitation buying or recommending that mount to anyone else.

Thankfully its a small neighbourhood where everyone knows everyone else so I not only got it back but know who did it and he's confessed as he knows me and didn't realise it was mine as well as offering to pay for a new antenna, mount and the body repair.

G3TPW Cobwebb or the easier to build G3TXQ variant.

5 full size dipoles covering 20-17-15-12-10m in a compact 8.5ft x 8.5ft antenna. Very easy to homebrew the G3TXQ variant.

http://www.karinya.net/g3txq/cobweb/

Best part is that unlike a conventional dipole the radiation pattern is almost omnidirectional with just a 3dB difference between the sides.

The guys doing SDR with the Kenwood TS590 are using an ELAD switch box.

http://ecom.eladit.com/epages/990298944.sf/it_IT/?ObjectPath=/Shops/990298944/Products/%22ELAD%20ASW-1%22

My Icom 7000 goes into RTTY mode when using an external tuner.

Repurposing the existing FM antenna hole is pretty much the only option on that car. You're not going to be really using any other kind of mount. Beware that the roof is thin though so you're not going to be wanting to put anything large on there but it should take something like a Larsen NMO dual band antenna quite happily.

I doubt you'd be able to give it away. People are coming to the realisation that making a contact on 75/80/160m mobile merely proves QRP works. 100W in for less than 1W ERP...

My Little Tarheel does 80m. I rapidly came to the conclusion I might as well be TXing into a 50 ohm resistor.

The OP had. The K400 is a lip mount.

It is that really thin stuff barely 2mm in diameter and nigh on impossible to crush with a rubber door or trunk/hatch seal.

Nothing to add to the above really. They're cheap and will get you on the air. Depending on how serious you decide to go with /M ops then you can start moving on to more efficient and larger antennas.

Hi Chas. I've just measured my K400 mount and it protrudes 3mm. I reckon you wouldn't want any less than a 4mm gap. 0.165" is just a hair breadth wider than 4mm so although it'll be close it should be OK.